Hunter weapon
Term The term Hunter Weapon is often used as a joke. The joke started from the initial explosive popularity of the Hunter class and the seeming over-exuberance of some of its adherents to claim that nearly any weapon that seemed remotely useful to a hunter was a "hunter weapon". This quickly escalated to calling any weapon or even non-weapons "hunter weapon" as sarcasm. Real Hunter Weapons There are in fact several melee weapons out there which are very good for Hunters, especially when enchanted with +Agility or Savagery. The important thing to consider is the stat distribution rather than the listed weapon DPS. This allows the Hunter to focus on certain stats while also having a much larger spectrum of items to look through. This page should help you with that search. However, it is important to keep in mind that a good hunter should pass a melee weapon to a melee class if the item is an upgrade to them; they would make 100% use of the item, where a Hunter would only benefit from the stats. Broadly speaking, Daggers and Polearms are the two primary melee weapon classes of interest, with the occasional Axe. Although Swords can at times have stats which are beneficial to Hunters, you will nearly always be competing with another class for those, (either the Rogue, Paladin, or Warrior generally) and so you will generally find it better to wait until a suitable Polearm becomes available, since not only are the stats on it more likely to be specifically tailored to a Hunter, the other character classes usually have less interest in Polearms as well. Weapon uses Before The Burning Crusade, raiding hunters generally preferred to dual wield weapons. Soloing or PvP hunters were more likely to end up taking a two-handed weapon because of the circumstances of Hunter melee: a Hunter should only melee once, while getting off a Wing Clip, and it is better to make that one hit as strong and heavy as possible. The Burning Crusade added a lot of hunter-friendly two-handed weapons. In addition, the Savagery enchantment further tilted the balance towards 2H weapons. The value of stat bonuses for hunters Hunters benefit most from the following bonuses: * Agility. Each point of Agility gives 1 Ranged AP. ** At level 60: ~33 Agility gives 1% crit (14 crit rating) ** At level 60: 20 Agility gives about 1% dodge (12 dodge rating) ** At level 70: 40 Agility gives 1% crit (22 crit rating), and 1.6% dodge ** Agility also increases your armor rating slightly. * (Ranged) Attack Power: 14 AP gives 1 base DPS. Many shots benefit from it as well. 22% of the hunter's Attack Power is added to the pet's Attack Power and spell damage. * Crit rating: increases your chance to critically strike, therefore increasing your overall damage. The value of crit% scales with your base damage. There are also several talents and abilities that benefit from this. * Hit rating: decreases your chance to miss, up to 142 hit rating, when you will not benefit from additional hit rating anymore. With regards to overall damage, the effects are very similar to crit rating, until you reach the hit cap. Talents, weapon bonuses and breed effects can lower the hit rating needed to stop missing. * Stamina: each point of Stamina increases total hit points by 10 (10.5 to Tauren or hunters with the Endurance Training talent). Since about 35% of your Stamina go over to your pet, this also benefits your pet's survivability. * Intellect: each point of Intellect increases total mana by 15. It also increases the effect from Aspect of the Viper and influences certain talents, most noticeably Careful Aim in the Marksmanship tree. * Mana/5s: increased mana regen will allow you to perform more shots and abilities before running out of mana. The effect of this is insignificant during short fights, but rather significant for long encounters (grinding/farming and a number of boss fights). Haste rating would also increase your damage up to a certain point, as increased haste means that you will attack more often per second, causing more overall damage. However, bonuses to haste rating are very rare on items that would otherwise be useful to hunters. Also, it is counterproductive if your base attack speed becomes too high, because it makes it impossible to run effective shot rotations (involving Steady Shot). This is especially true for Beast Mastery hunters, because their Serpent's Swiftness talent provides 20% bonus to attack speed already. Spirit does have some value, since it increases your mana and health regeneration. The latter is insignificant since a hunter typically does not suffer a lot of physical damage, and your mana regeneration is better served by increasing your intellect (and using Aspect of the Viper) or using gear that gives you Mana per 5 seconds. Strength is almost completely useless, since on hunters it only increases your melee attack power, so any effects from strength are only visible while you are engaged in melee fighting, a situation that hunters should avoid as much as possible. Hunter AEP AEP is a system developed for rogues to quickly compare the value of different melee weapons. It works by equating the different bonus types (AP, crit rating and so forth) with agility. A similar method has been developed for hunters and it has become known as Hunter AEP, HAP or HAEP. Regarding HAP, it is especially important to consider that the DPS value of many item bonuses scales with your damage potential. For example, crit rating becomes more important with increasing weapon DPS and attack power, because the (absolute) damage increase from critical strikes linearly depends on the amount of non-critical damage you would have caused. Therefore, any selection of HAP weights is only meaningful for a given set of talents, character level, shot rotation and equipment. For these reasons, the HAP values given in this table are to be taken merely as rough guidelines, as they result from one particular instance of HAP, while your current situation (and evaluation of certain bonuses such as "Stamina") might differ considerably. The HAP values given here do have a certain application when comparing different weapons from a hunter perspective. Enchants For optimal result, the following Enchantments are available for melee weapons. 1H * +30 Intellect each, for 60 Intellect (900 mana) total (if you have the Careful Aim talent this will also give you 27 AP total) (When using Aspect of the Viper this will increase your mana regen by up to 15 mp/5) * +15 Agility each, to give +30 Agility total * +20 Agility each, to give +40 Agility total 2H * +35 Agility * +70 AP * +25 Agility Based on your preference for AP / Agility / Intellect, you may want to determine whether you prefer 1H or 2H weapons. Raiding marksman hunters will probably prefer to use 2x30 Intellect as this provides the best benefit in most cases. Note: Mongoose does not proc off ranged attacks. (neither does Crusader, lifestealing, or fiery enchant) Weapons ---- Category:Game Terms Category:Hunters Category:Weapons